Lego Lord of the Rings review

Traveller's Tales once again prove they're the masters of family gaming with
this wonderful, action-packed jaunt through a Lego reimagining of Middle
Earth.

5

Image 1 of 4

Lego Lord of the Rings is out now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Image 1 of 4

Lego Lord of the Rings is out now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Image 1 of 4

Lego Lord of the Rings is out now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Image 1 of 4

Lego Lord of the Rings is out now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

By Ashton Raze

7:00AM GMT 11 Dec 2012

If you've ever looked for a family game series that sets the bar for quality, the Lego games have likely been your first port of call. Games with not one but two licenses that are excellently crafted, lovingly made and suitable for almost any age. After the fantastic fan-service of Harry Potter, the sprawling streets of Gotham and the space-faring of Star Wars, it comes as no surprise that Lego Lord of the Rings is a winning combination. However, it's more than that too. With this latest Lego title, Traveller's Tales have really hit the mark, crafting a beautifully well-rounded, fleshed-out take on Middle Earth. It makes perfect use of both IPs, and may just sit up there as one of this year's best titles.

For those who've played any of the past Lego games, the structure will be initially familiar; you're presented with a series of levels, linked together by a hub world. Lego Batman 2's hub presented a sprawling, impressive Gotham, but it was occasionally a pain to navigate. Middle Earth has no such problems. It's a sweeping fantasy map, filled with gorgeous vistas, the towering Isengard, the impressive mountainous Minas Tirith, and other familiar locations such as The Shire, Weathertop etc. Eventually, this whole area of Middle Earth is yours to explore. It gradually opens up, of course; one does not simply walk into Mordor after completing the prologue.

What sets Lego Lord of the Rings apart from past games is the structure. The hub world no longer just contains singular puzzles to solve and bricks to find; there are quests dotted around the landscape, items to craft, races to win and characters to find and purchase. None of the quests are particularly complex; they usually involve finding or crafting an item for a reward, but it's an excellent touch given the setting, riffing on fantasy RPG gametype expectations. The crafting mechanic allows you to create a whole host of items that offer special abilities which, eventually, allows you to perform special actions without having to switch to the relevant character with that particular function. It's a far more natural progression system than in past games, where finding and buying the right character was mandatory.

The game sticks pretty rigidly to the movies (and although there's plenty of scenes cut out, the game has a pretty impressive running time, taking me around 15 hours to 'finish' the game at 35% completion). At first, the marriage between the game and Jackson's epic trilogy seems a little jarring; the game uses all the movie's audio and dialogue, which means there's little scope for the kind of script-based comedy seen in Lego Batman 2. This is made up for with plenty of visual gags, with a preening Legolas being something of a highlight. Occasionally it's still jarring when one of the movie's dramatic death scenes crops up, but largely these are handled pretty well. Boromir's death by banana, for example, should be added to the movie trilogy via George Lucas-style CGI, and the campaign starts here.

The levels themselves benefit greatly from the reliance on the movie's structure. One of the first levels sees your four hobbits sneaking past a ringwraith, using the environment to create distractions in order to make their way through the forest. There are large-scale battles, made no less epic by the fact the characters are made of cheerful-looking blocks. There's a level where you get to play as the Ents, smashing up Isengard. There are dozens of cinematic moments; riding a horse through a battlefield as hundreds of Lego Uruk-hai charge past, fleeing from Shelob as a terrified Frodo.

Related Articles

Perhaps most impressive though is the level of polish found here. While past Lego games have been excellent, they've often been marred by annoying clipping issues or other bugs. On the Xbox 360 version of Lego LOTR, I didn't encounter a single problem; characters are quick to bounce back if they do happen to get stuck on the destructible environment, and the environmental and level design has been tweaked to perfection, eliminating a lot of the series' problems.

It's also a vast, huge game, offering absolutely tons of extra content for those who play the Lego titles to completion. Even if you're just in it for the story though, it's a wonderful, loving take on the adventures of Frodo, Samwise, Gandalf and co. It's not only Traveller's Tales' best Lego game yet, but also the best Lord of the Rings game we've seen. A magical, lovingly-crafted take on Tolkien's tale and an excellent video game to boot.